


Case #0140819: Pileup

by LiquidMirrors



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Car Accidents, Destruction, Horror, Please read this after at least listening up to ep. 134! There's some slight spoilers!!, highways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 09:03:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20273392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiquidMirrors/pseuds/LiquidMirrors
Summary: Martin Blackwood, assistant to Peter Lukas, head of the Magnus Institute. Recording statement #0140819: Statement of Warren Ackles, given August 19th, 2014. Regarding a car accident on, as he named it, "Highway 115."





	Case #0140819: Pileup

**Case #0140819** \- <strike>"Pileup"</strike>

  * Martin Blackwood, assistant to Peter Lukas, Head of the Magnus Institute. Recording statement #0140819: Statement of Warren Ackles, taken directly from the subject August 19th, 2014.

STATEMENT BEGINS

You probably already know about the road 115 pileup that occurred a few months back. I mean, everyone has at least caught a glimpse of the accident on the news or their laptop, their phone, or even their goddamn Twitter feed. They all have a vague notion of what occurred; 13 dead, all due to various reasons, whether it was blunt force trauma or blood loss. If you think about it, though, you might not recall any interviews from any victims or survivors of the incident. None of us were questioned about what had happened, or what exactly caused the disaster. I'm here to lay down my account, though, since we don't really have any extensive or well-known academic places like you guys back home.

My family does not know that I'm telling you all of this, so I'd ask that you keep any records of me being here confidential. I know that I may be a minor until this November, but I still hope you'd keep it in mind that it's for the best if this... case? is more buried than the others. Mom and dad, they're in the right mindset along with everyone else; staying quiet means you'll be left alone. It also means that you're not being haunted any more. I'm doing this because that road still haunts me. I can't really forget that highway, mainly due to my dreams. They come back just often enough to make sure that that day in March will  _ never _ leave the back of my skull.

I guess now's the part where I actually take the time to explain what happened.

I… think I need a moment.

Sorry.

[RECORDING PAUSES.]

-ank you for the tea, too. I really… it helps, I guess.

Okay.

[A DEEP SIGH IS HEARD.]

I'm more of a quiet person. When it comes in terms of other people, I tend to either stay silent and do my own thing, or I insert just enough to the conversation to not be brushed off as chronically antisocial. It's really just a tactic to acknowledge that yes, I'm still in the land of the living and not up in the clouds.

It was during one of these days where I was sitting through one of the former moods while my parents, my sister and I were driving home from going out to dinner. Noodles, I remember. I had plugged in some earbuds and was listening to my music while I stared out the window. Dad was talking to my sister, Diane, about some sort of mortgage advice, as she had wanted to buy a house with her new husband. I would only hear snippets and segments of conversation that weaved and floated in and out of the lyrics of my music. I don't think I fully noticed the number of cars around us increasing, nor did I fully realize the fact that all those cars, including ours, were slowing down to a crawl.

Traffic.

See, the highway we were taking was well-traveled, and we were used to a jam or two every few days, but it still didn't mean it felt like a hassle to sit through. For about ten minutes we slowly made our way down highway 115, until we came across an overpass that I hadn't remembered being there before.

I'm an avid window-watcher, so it sort of surprised me that I didn't take note of this overpass being here before. It was even more odd due to how old it looked. There was graffiti sprayed across the inner walls, stray weeds sprouting out of old cracks and such. There was a phrase in these dripping neon colors that caught my eye, but I only made out the first half as we made our way out from under the bridge. I don't know if the other half was even obscured, but all I recall in that split second was seeing it read,

"WHERE WILL YOU GO".

I didn't have time to dwell too much on it, though, because after about two or three more minutes of the draining highway crawl, we hit full-blown gridlock.

Diane and dad's conversation seemed to slow down and subsequently drop off just like our journey did as we all stared silently at the mute gray sky, surrounded by the river of cars. It was finally dawning on us that we could be stuck there for at least a good hour. Never in my life had I ever been more thankful for charging ports.

After about twenty minutes and no sign of movement, our parents began to get agitated. After forty minutes, my dad opened the car door to take a look outside. Eventually, he came back with his arms up in the air and no new info. Everyone on the road was just stuck at a standstill, as confused and annoyed as we were. The cars up ahead weren't moving, but nothing about what had caused the glut had traveled up the grapevine.

I don't remember falling asleep in the car, but I presume that I did only because if I didn't, it means that I have missing time. If it isn't missing time, then it's impossible. I just remember opening my eyes to the sound of the world exploding. There was so much movement, my arms flailing and suddenly feeling like I was being strangled by my seatbelt strap. There was the crunching of metal and whiplash as my head swung left and right, catching glimpses of shattered glass and stray strands of hair. There was too much to register, and when the car finally settled, I shakily attempted to reconstruct my thoughts.

There was a crash, that was to start. We had been in a crash, or something that seemed like a crash. It was all still foggy as I attempted to look around the car, neck stinging as I turned my head. Most of the windows were shattered and it seemed like the windshield was almost completely gone. The airbags had deployed in the front two seats, and the cushions for the chairs were torn, leather giving way to foam padding and something that reminded me of pink frosted fiberglass insulation. Somehow, by the grace of whatever is up there, we had landed in an upright position, despite the fact that it appeared that all 4 sides of the car had been bashed or caved inwards.

After coming to my senses a little, it clicked that the airbags to the front had deployed. Yes, they did. I could see it clearly because...mom and dad weren't in their seats. In fact, there was no evidence to show that they had ever even  _ been _ in the car to begin with. Mom's purse wasn't on the floor, dad's fuzzy dice and air freshener were nowhere to be seen. The keys weren't in the ignition, there was no blood on the dashboard, and not even a scrap of clothing or red stain showed where they could have potentially crawled out of the windows. That also meant that if they weren't pulled out, they couldn't have been rescued, either. It left me and Diane alone, stuck in the backseat.

I don't know if she was awake or not when I turned to her. She looked panicked, more than I was feeling at the moment. We were both pretty banged up, with Diane suffering more scratches, cuts, and bruises from being thrown around like ragdolls in a snowglobe. The cave-in to my right must have pinned down my legs, because whenever I tried to move my bottom half, it started hurting. I think Diane was overall fine though, and she told me that she was gonna go outside and search for help. I didn't really say anything, more due to shock than anything else. She struggled with her seatbelt, unbuckling it before painfully crawling out the window. I tried not to focus on the sounds of her wincing as bits of glass cut her skin. After she fell out of the car, I saw her head pop back up from the ground, still worried and in pain. She said that she would come back for me, as fast as she could. She told me to do anything to stay awake. Then she started walking down the highway.

I think I was compartmentalizing, because despite all the windows being broken, I never considered looking outside. That or my brain was too jangled to concentrate on it. Only then it hit me that I could see the highway around our wreck. It took me longer than it should have to understand what was around me, reason being it was such a stark contrast to the place we had been mere minutes ago.

Even today, I still don't really understand how everything changed so fast.

Outside our car was a highway, the very same highway that we'd been stuck on before the crash. Except now, the road was more cracked and littered with potholes than ever, the blacktop faded and as gray as the previously overcast sky. The dotted white lines for the lanes were so faded that they were practically nonexistent. Spiderwebbing cracks had spread all across the asphalt, with tufts of sickly yellow grass that stood up like the fur of some submerged beast. Instead of the monotonous gray from before, the sky seemed to be tainted with a yellow that reminded me of jaundiced skin. The trees on either side of the road were as sickly as the rest of this place, with dying leaves that wilted in nicotine browns and yellows. The main staple of this  _ place _ though were the other cars. They were scattered all across the dead highway, in piles, ditches or shoved aside. Every single car was as mangled and twisted up as our own, but despite all of the carnage, despite how the road was stained and scattered with broken glass, gas puddles, smoke and car fires, there wasn't a single bloodstain anywhere. There were no bodies on the ground or severed limbs, no survivors crawling out of their own vehicles calling out for help. There weren't any corpses sitting dead in their seats, either, and no rescue workers that were supposed to be flooding the scene any moment. Even more unsettling was the creeping realization about how we had ended up here. We had gotten into a crash, right? Our car itself was living proof of that. Although, there was one more thing that kept nagging at me, despite everything swimming together.

_ How can you crash your car in gridlock? _

Immediately after that, there was a droning sound that ripped through the silence. It was in the distance, and after listening closely, it sounded like the horn of a ship, except with the undertones of screeching metal, the same screech I heard as our car had imploded. When I heard it, I started to feel more panicked than before. My thoughts started coming together, telling me that this place was wrong, and that that sound was a harbinger of something else. I began struggling with my seatbelt, almost beat-for-beat the way Diane did with hers, except it wouldn't let me go.

Diane. She went out there to get help.

I started calling out for her, but nobody was there. I'd seen her leave the car, I saw her beginning to walk away… but I never actually  _ saw _ her walking down the road. She wasn't anywhere, and my screams just bounced off the wreckage of obliterated cars.

The horn sounded off again, louder this time in some sick response to my screaming. The trees on either side of me seemed to blanch and retreat, as if making themselves smaller. Everything looked yellow, brown, gray, black - everything smelled and tasted like copper or gasoline, or smoke and burning rubber and soot, and…

As the droning got louder, I saw this cloud of thick black smoke in the distance. It was making its way down the highway, and along with the horn, there was a secondary noise too, this grinding that was like gears or the churning of old machinery.

The overpass flashed in my mind again, covered in its graffiti and weeds. I had never seen it before that day. It all smelled like smoke, the horns grew even louder, the grinding was more violent, and I swear my ears were on the verge of exploding. The smoke cloud was just down the road now, and I could see something shifting deep inside of it, something enormous. There were lights deep inside the cloud, muted and searching around like unblinking eyes. The bridge, the graffiti, a phrase that seemed to call out to me from the profanity and the fake satanic bullshit written by edgy teens with nothing better to do. And still it kept. Coming. Closer. I saw that phrase again, neon yellow bubble letters outlined in a red that dripped like blood.

"WHERE WILL YOU GO".

As it kept chugging closer, I caught more glimpses of the monstrosity shrouded in black. There were churning pistons and frayed wires, accompanied by a clicking and whirring combined with a roaring that could have only been that of an enormous furnace eating away at whatever fuel it was given. I swear to you, the closer it got, the more the air smelled like charcoal and… something else. It was a beast, a mountain of gears and clockwork and steel fused together into something that resembled no living being on this earth. It scavenged the highway, pushing slowly through the piles of cars in search of something, something useful to it, occasionally ripping off an exhaust pipe or a radiator and  _ pulling _ it into itself. A mountain of chaos that contorted under the rotten sky, made up of things that I knew; the teeth of a tank, artillery rounds, computer servers and bicycle wheels, knowing what it was and deciding to turn the tables, and when it finally looked upon me with spotlights for too many eyes and gears and metal and car engines, it spoke in a voice that sounded like skyscrapers collapsing into dust, completing whatever words were on that damned overpass that brought us there in the first place, that brought us to the fields to be culled.

"WHERE WILL YOU GO

WHEN YOU HAVE BUILT GOD?"

And it was a genuine question. It did not know.

It was a genuine question. It was a genuine threat. It was a  _ promise. _

The fumes were choking me, the horn screaming directly in my face, so piercing and all-encompassing that it was all my brain could process. Not even my own screams could counter its sheer barrage of noise. Every sound blended together, the horn, the gears, my pleading, and the howls from the furnace that may have not just been the flames of burning coal, the howls that hinted at the reason why the world tasted like charcoal and ash and a burned barbecue. It tore open the roof of the car, peeling it back like tissue paper, leaning in close to me, a red spotlight tuned onto my face. This time, I think my ears were actually bleeding, because even seeing it this close was pure agony. My legs throbbed along with my heartbeat, and the lack of clean air was what eventually dragged me back into the dark.

I came to in the back of an ambulance, two paramedics leaning over me and talking in fast voices. There was soot on my face and palms, and my clothes were torn and stained with gas. Then it clicked that there was this electronic beeping noise that pierced through the paramedics and their attempts to talk to me. The beeping was loud, and growing in frequency. I don't remember anything after trying to scramble away from the heart monitor, only that it was hooked up to me, and every single beep it made brought me back into the reach of that stained amalgamation on highway 115. Those same paramedics, later on, said that they needed to hold me down and sedate me in order to keep me calm. They also told me that I had been screaming the whole time, saying, "_They're inside it, it's eating them to live_."

Later on, I was debriefed by the police about the incident. There was, apparently, a massive pileup that had occurred when, after the gridlock faded out, a lumber truck's secured logs shook loose, causing drivers to swerve out of control. I was told that my parents weren't among the body count, but then the officers began asking questions about my sister. When I asked about Diane, they said that they found mom and dad laying on the ground outside the car, covering their heads in shock. I was pinned in the backseat, unconscious, with a concussion and a few sprained vertebrae. Diane was not there. In fact, from what I gleaned, she was missing along with eight other people who had seemingly not died in the accident.

We were finally sent home by the authorities, and we didn't speak to each other for a handful of days. We were still all in shock. Mom and dad didn't ask me what happened, and when they started storing away photos of Diane, I didn't ask them anything either. We didn't even really talk about her at the funeral, really. When Alan, her husband, asked about what happened to her, mom started shaking, covering her face to hide her tears before quickly walking back to our new car. When Alan asked me, I felt my eyes glaze over, and caught the faint smell of gas in the air.

I said that the road took her before walking away.

I don't really know if it was the road, though. What I'm left with are the dreams, where a handful of scenes replay over and over again.

There's the footage from the news broadcast, the footage that shows the now-iconic image of mom and dad sitting in the back of an ambulance, wrapped in trauma blankets and a steaming thermos between them.

There's the doctors telling me about the state they found me in, and how I was suffering from smoke inhalation from a fire that was not there.

There's the abomination dragging itself down roads I don't know, picking through wrecks for new fuel and parts.

And there's the highways that I now refuse to travel down, and will never travel down again, because every moment I look out the window, I can almost see Diane, can almost hear her voice in the droning call of the disgusting thing as it turns her into its source. A call that sounds like a ship, or the trumpet of a battalion that knows it will win the war.

Because we designed it to in the first place.

STATEMENT ENDS

I... I don't really know how to approach this one. At first I assumed that there would be some sort of relation to... I think it was the Slaughter or the Frenzy that was on my mind? I remember hearing about the "highway 115" accident on the news - it was told to be one of America's more violent major accidents on the road. I never knew that the couple was his parents, though... strange.

Of course, there is the theme of destruction that factors into whatever the Extinction might be made up of, and it doesn't really surprise me that Warren kept using turns of phrases like "skyscrapers collapsing." It's obvious that this entity or whatever it was weaved its way through to him and everyone else who saw that place.

It bothers me though how on the nose the monster was with its own message. 

In the end, we might all be consumed by our own creations.

That's something to think about, isn't it?

END RECORDING

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this in two nights! I've wanted to write an Extinction statement for a while now, but I didn't really have a grasp on too much of its themes since, at the time, we only had Binary and Time of Revelation to look too. I did write this before Concrete Jungle, though, so I'm not sure if I completely butchered its themes or if I was too on the nose with them! Sorry if this statement is more chaotic than most, or if it doesn't really fit the Magnus atmosphere, I just found myself spilling my guts the more and more that I kept drafting it.
> 
> Probably is no surprise that it came to me in a car ride with my family after we were going out to dinner. It's true, really, traffic is a bitch.


End file.
